One recent hot topic amid the U.S. Department of Defense's shift to focusing on "China, China, China" has been China's embrace of overseas military basing. This has been made more stark by the DoD revealing that China has been interested in establishing a base in at least 18 different countries, though so far Beijing has actually scored only moderate success in establishing a permanent presence in Djibouti, and now likely Cambodia. A common refrain has been concerns about the threat to the United States, ambiguously defined, though this seems geared, at least in part, to justify otherwise non-essential missions, force structure, and capabilities for parts of the department that feel left behind in the focus on China. We argue, instead, that the United States should consider Chinese overseas basing a competition phase challenge over international influence, because Beijing appears to have neither the intent nor capability through at least 2030 to conduct kinetic offensive operations against the United States. Our judgment is based on an extensive review of Chinese military open source writings, which found that People's Liberation Army (PLA) researchers are acutely aware of the vulnerabilities of overseas basing, which stop them from being combat-credible in the way that U.S. overseas basing is. PLA researchers focus much more on leveraging overseas basing for competition phase missions, such as noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs) and sea lane patrols. The one potential driver we could identify that may lead the Chinese leadership to order its overseas forces to strike U.S. forces is if the United States implements a distant blockade of China during a future conflict – which further calls into question the utility of such an idea. This revised framing could help right-size the U.S. response to China's basing ambitions amid other higher priorities, and there are indicators the DoD can monitor to help hedge the risk of changing Chinese intent and growing capabilities into the future.

Chinese leaders see themselves in competition with the United States to build military power in space. The ongoing development of U.S. and Chinese capabilities could lead to unstable competition in space, raising the risk of rapid, and perhaps unintended, military escalation. This report surveys open-source literature across the Chinese defense enterprise to present a composite image of People's Liberation Army (PLA) perspectives and key factors for U.S.-China crisis stability in space. It draws on authoritative materials, including leader speeches reported in official media, defense white papers, and official professional military education, which collectively reflect political leader guidance and PLA strategy and doctrine. The findings suggest that the PLA's thinking on escalation dynamics in space has become significantly more risk-tolerant than that found in PLA documents published just a decade prior. This shift emphasizes Xi Jinping's guidance to be more proactive in shaping the international environment, which includes accepting higher but carefully calibrated levels of risk even though such proactive measures might result in unintended escalation with the United States. This higher escalation tolerance is complicated by Chinese leaders' inflated threat perceptions of the United States and resultant policy approach that resists cooperating with the United States to arrest unintended crisis escalation.

The People's Republic of China is brokering international access agreements to expand its security footprint overseas and extend the reach of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). While these bases' utility in peacetime is clear, their utility in wartime is less so. The authors of this report explore China's military strategy for its overseas bases—specifically, how Chinese military researchers view the utility of overseas bases during a war—based on a review of open-source Chinese military writings. The authors then address the risks that these bases might pose to U.S. military interests through 2030. Chinese military writings suggest that the PLA has neither the intent nor the capability to use overseas military bases to launch preemptive attacks or other offensive operations on U.S. forces or interests through at least 2030. While Chinese overseas military basing remains important to monitor, the authors' research shows that Chinese bases overseas are unlikely to become threats to U.S. interests and forces during this time frame. The authors also note that any PLA shift toward conducting offensive operations from its overseas bases may be accompanied by specific indications and warnings that the U.S. government can monitor.

Improvements in Russian and Chinese counterspace capabilities could endanger the space-based capabilities that the United States relies on for a broad array of military and economic functions. The proliferation of U.S. and adversary capabilities could lead to unstable competition in space, raising the risk of unintended military escalation. In this report, the authors examine the conventional wisdom on escalation in the space domain to offer recommendations for how the U.S. Space Force (USSF) and other stakeholders can better prepare to deter and manage escalation. They investigate the implications of six propositions related to stability: (1) the incentives to employ offensive capabilities early in a conflict, (2) the benefits of leveraging foreign and commercial systems, (3) the utility of communications channels for crisis prevention and de-escalation, (4) the feasibility of promoting shared norms of responsible behavior, (5) the strategic benefits of selective revelation, and (6) the use of reversible capabilities to manage escalation.